Coffee as a last name

[Tom Zurinskas]

It’s interesting to see various attempts at intuitive American English phonetic notation and how confusing it can be.  A new notation is what we need and what truespel provides.  Both SAMPA and truespel as phonetic notations were created in 1987.  SAMPA was contrived by representatives from European countries.  America was not invited to participate.  Thus, the result was and is clearly not English friendly.  Truespel instead examined the best way to spell English phonemes in an English friendly and keyboard friendly way while also retaining normal punctuation and capitalization.  Truespel is a writing system as well as a phonetic system.  It shows stress in a word, so it’s a pronunciation guide system.

Basically, it’s time for America to advance to a user friendly phonetic notation that can allow integration of literacy elements.  It can be used for teaching reading, much as IBM’s “Writing to Read”, as well as dictionary keys, translation guides, and analysis tools.  Truespel is the only candidate that does this in an English friendly way.

Truespel English phonetic conversion is free at truespel.com.  This sentence has all 40 American English sounds first in tradspel then in truespel: That quick beige fox jumped in the air over each thin dog.  Look out, I shout, for he’s foiled you again.  ~~That kwik baezh faaks jumpd in thee air oever eech thhin daug.  Look out, Ie shout, for heez foild yue uggen.~~  A double consonant starts a stressed syllable, else the first syllable is stressed.   A double tilde (~~) starts and ends a truespeld phrase.  A single tilde is used before a single truespeld word, e.g., ~werd.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.





> Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 20:46:24 -0500
> From: Berson at ATT.NET
> Subject: Re: Coffee as a last name
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
> Subject: Re: Coffee as a last name
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Is the pronunciation of "ko'fi" the same as my "koh-fee"?
>
> Joel
>
> At 12/4/2007 07:40 PM, Rowan McMullin wrote:
>>Kofi is a Ghanaian day-name. It is pronounced ko'fi, and it means he was
>>born on a Friday. The female counterpart is Afua.
>>
>>-Rowan
>>
>>On Dec 4, 2007 6:34 PM, Joel S. Berson  wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
>>> Subject: Re: Coffee as a last name
>>>
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> At 12/4/2007 04:18 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>>Does anyone know how Kofi Anan pronounces his first name? Just wondering.
>>>
>>> I have only heard "koh-fee" from broadcasters. (Please excuse my
>>> naive phonetics.)
>>>
>>> Joel
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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